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Garret from HipChat here. The way we decided on AIR is close to what you guessed but we had one major requirement: the app can not suck. That means it can't fee

Garret from HipChat here. The way we decided on AIR is close to what you guessed but we had one major requirement: the app can not suck. That means it can't feel like a wrapped up web app, it can't use unnecessary CPU and memory, and it must be pleasant to use. It's true that lots of AIR apps are nasty, and that's why it gets a bad name. We agreed that we'd only use AIR if we could make the app beautiful and fast through our hard work, and we were able to do that (go try it and see). As a result we've saved a lot of time, only have to write features once, and have a consistent user experience between all users. Even Alex himself enjoyed it and provided some feedback: http://twitter.com/#!/al3x/status/25370589657042945 http://twitter.com/#!/al3x/status/25370589657042945. Note that the feedback is mostly minor improvements, not "wow this app is gross". Of course, if you want to hate something you'll find a way - http://bit.ly/eCRyMc http://bit.ly/eCRyMc. "Settling for mediocrity" is not a great way to describe us, however. Mediocre is defined as "not very good" which is how we view the current state of group chat services. Deciding to use a self-hosted IRC or Jabber server is settling for mediocrity (feature comparison: http://www.hipchat.com/compare http://www.hipchat.com/compare). Bottom line: we're building a tool that is a joy to use and allows teams to get more work done. And don't settle for mediocrity, just work smart.

dools 16y ago
Hmm didn't mean to "tar you with the mediocre brush" there. I just wanted to illustrate that whatever you need to do to get a product to market is fine so long as people use and enjoy it. I've removed the bits from the article specifically referring to "too much cpu/memory" as that's not really the original point of Alex's post anyway and I can see how that directly implicates a problem in your software which I have no evidence of. EDIT: oops! s/have evidence/have no evidence/
- powdahound 16y ago
  No worries. Totally agree with your message, just don't think "mediocre" is the right word for it. Every decision in a company is about compromise. If you can't compromise intelligently you're screwed.

dools 16y ago

Hmm didn't mean to "tar you with the mediocre brush" there. I just wanted to illustrate that whatever you need to do to get a product to market is fine so long as people use and enjoy it. I've removed the bits from the article specifically referring to "too much cpu/memory" as that's not really the original point of Alex's post anyway and I can see how that directly implicates a problem in your software which I have no evidence of. EDIT: oops! s/have evidence/have no evidence/

powdahound 16y ago
No worries. Totally agree with your message, just don't think "mediocre" is the right word for it. Every decision in a company is about compromise. If you can't compromise intelligently you're screwed.